Salesforce.com Piles On the Cloud Products at Dreamforce X Conference

By Chris Preimesberger |
Posted 2012-09-20

People Traffic Jam

Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff announced that a whopping 90,000 people had registered for Dreamforce X, which would be an all-time record for an IT event in the Bay Area. By the looks of the event all week, there should be few doubters that show attendance reached that five-digit number.

ChatterBox Storage Makes Its Debut

Salesforce went directly into a market war with a current partnerBoxand against a flotilla of others by introducing Chatterbox online storage. This is the first Salesforce application that enables enterprises to connect, collaborate and share files across devices. Chatterbox combines Salesforce with Chatter and allows users to share and manage files, access files from mobile devices and collaborate on business projects.

Data.com: Getting Those Customer Contacts Right

Salesforce launched the Data.com Social Key for combing social Websites to discover useful information for connecting with customers and prospects. Data.com organizes existing customer contact information, while Social Key is designed to identify real-time public social data, such as specific customer tweets or other communications, in order to make deeper connections with customers.

New Business Model: Literally Touch and Go

Salesforce Touch delivers Salesforce cloud applications to mobile devices and is based on HTML5, the mark-up language standard for Web browsers. Salesforce said Touch "now brings Salesforce to any mobile device, regardless of platform." However, right now it's only available on Apple iOS devices.

Crowd-Sourcing Chatter Communities

When you have a question or problem about anything, now you can ask a large group of people for advice. Chatter Communities for Partners, a variation of its Chatter social networking platform, connects partners, suppliers and distributors. Another offering, Chatter Communities for Service, based on its existing Salesforce Service Cloud, delivers customer service in a social networking environment. It also enables customer self-service by enabling customers to share information with each other to get answers to their questions. These apps can be customized for each enterprise with logos, colors and special designs.

Career Management Moves to the Cloud

Salesforce has rebranded and introduced its new career-management cloud service, Work.com, which is based on Salesforce's 2011 Rypple acquisition. Work.com is a social performance and goal-setting application that gives employees feedback about how they're performing in their positions. The software is used by Facebook, Gilt Groupe, Mozilla and Rackspace, among hundreds of other customers. For example, Work.com allows employees to thank colleagues, win badges and provide recognition from within Salesforce Chatter. Moreover, customers using Salesforce products such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and the Force.com platform will be able to leverage employee feedback tools to improve their own workforce performance.

Salesforce Mantra: Business Is All Social

Salesforce revealed plans for the integration of Buddy Media, which it acquired earlier this year for $698 million, and Radian6, which it acquired in 2011 for $326 million, to integrate social media into marketing campaigns.Â These tools enable enterprises to keep track of chatter about themselves in social channels so that customer issues can be solved quickly and efficiently and that better sales opportunities can be created.

New on the Force.com Platform

The Salesforce Platform, the leading enterprise cloud platform with more than 2.5 million apps, now offers nine major servicesForce.com, Heroku, Site.com, Database.com, Chatter, Chatter Communities, AppExchange, Salesforce Identity and Salesforceplus all the APIs necessary to allow developers to create applications for these services.

Sir Richard Branson

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff interviews Virgin America founder and Chairman Sir Richard Branson onstage on the afternoon of Day 2 at Dreamforce 10. In his own entertaining way, Branson offered some entrepreneurial tips based on his long, successful career in publishing, music and the airline industry. "I've always dreamt big, as you certainly have, and a lot of people in this room have," Branson told Benioff in front of the keynote audience.

Benioff Roams the Crowd

Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff did not stay on stage for the entire three-hour keynote on Sept. 19, preferring to walk freely among the 6,000 attendees crammed into Moscone Center South on Day 2 of Dreamforce X.

Social Business Politico

California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former mayor of San Francisco, had a first-row seat among the thousands in attendance on Day 2 of Dreamforce X at Moscone Center South.

Hammer Hits Em Hard

Rapper M.C. Hammer and his dancers jumped up on stage to help fire up the crowd at the Day 2 keynote at Dreamforce X at Moscone Center South in San Francisco. Later in the week, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Lady Antebellum performed for attendees.